Ohio State lands Baylor guard Dale Bonner in Transfer Portal

Ohio State just picked up a new piece for its 2023-24 basketball team. On Monday, former Baylor Bears guard Dale Bonner announced his commitment to the Buckeyes for next season.

Bonner spent his first two seasons at Division II program Fairmont State, where he averaged 17.8 points as a freshman and over 20 points as a sophomore before transferring to Scott Drew’s club. Through two years in Waco, Bonner was never a consistent starter for the Bears and averaged less than four points a game. Now, he’ll use his COVID year in Columbus.

The numbers thus far at a high-major level are underwhelming, but as usual with Scott Drew guards, Bonner flashed three-point shooting and defense to couple with a few years of Big 12 experience now under his belt. You also have to realize he played in perhaps the most talented backcourt in the country, so minutes were slim and shot attempts even slimmer.

There could be a breakout player in him yet if he’s able to play as OSU’s primary point guard in his final year. After all, he did average 2.7 assists per game and 5.6 of them per 40 minutes, which ranked first on Baylor and would’ve been the highest rate on last year’s Ohio State team as well. A low-usage senior that should be a solid contributor with more minutes. Not a big name, but should be a solid depth piece, if not something much better.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire.

Transfer portal background information

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The database is a normal database, sortable by a variety of topics, including (of course) sport and name. A player’s individual entry includes basic details such as contact info, whether the player was on scholarship and whether the player is transferring as a graduate student.

A player can ask that a “do not contact” tag be placed on the report. In those instances, the players don’t want to be contacted by schools unless they’ve initiated the communication.

The portal has been around since Oct. 15, 2018 and the new calendar cycle within the portal begins each August. For example, the 2021-22 cycle started Aug. 1. During the 2020-21 cycle, 2,626 FBS football players entered the transfer portal (including walk-ons). That comes after 1,681 entered during the 2019-20 cycle and 1,709 during the abbreviated 2018-19 cycle. In comparison, 1,833 Division I basketball players entered the portal during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.